Katie and I went to the Lindenhurst Diner today to see Carl Paladino. We thought there would be a media frenzy, but only a few other news stations were there. When we arrived Paladino and his team were eating so there was some waiting around. He didn’t walk around the diner and talk to the people like I thought he would, but he took pictures in between eating. We were able to interview him outside of the diner, and he wasn’t very friendly. He was rather snippy with the media and then he ran off to his car as if the five reporters that were there were going to chase him down…I don’t think anybody was too upset to see him go. Katie and I left the diner in search of people to interview, it was hard at first since nobody was willing to do so..and half of them had no idea who he was. Finally we tried the ambush strategy which worked great and I was able to write and edit the story by the end of the day.

I was supposed to go to Steve Levy’s office and do a package on November being homeless awareness month and how he and other advocates are raising awareness of the issue and helping those who will need it the cold winter months ahead.

Sadly though when Pete and I got there close to 1 pm we were told the conference was postponed till a later date. I had called earlier at around 10 am and was told the conference was still happening so I guess in between that time things changed. We saw another news crew and we told them to turn around as well. I just feel bad Pete had to drive all the way out to Hauppauge and we didn’t get anything!

Later on in the day I did a MOS just around our building and tried to ask students or anybody if they plan to vote this upcoming Tuesday. I got a majority of no’s and a few yes answers. MOS are hard because most people don’t want to give you the time of day but I pretty much asked anyone who crossed my path so I did manage to get a few interviews.

Today I finished my Domestic Violence package and it got on the air for tonights show. I am getting more comfortable each week with the editing and as I get going with more packages it will get the stories done quicker in the future. I also went to Westbury Sports Authority to do an MOS about the Fox blackout and if people will make effort to watch the World Series. I always find the MOS to be interesting because you never know who you’ll meet and what kind of answers you’ll get. The biggest challenge will always be location and finding that target group of people for each one especially in the middle of the day.

Yesterday, I go to the Mineola High School with Kyle. There is a charity at library. Students create coin cup to make money for helping poor children getting better education. It’s my first time to go to high school’s library. It’s very different from Chinese high school’s library. I see a Japanese comic book o the desk. It is impossible in China. Students can read their favorite book.

Gray watches the pictures when we back to news room. Overall, the pictures are good, but still have something should be noticed. When we do stand by, the reporter is perfect but the windows are bright as the background. I chose filter 1, Gray says that filter 3 should be better. It can make the windows blur. Another thing is that I should sit on the chair when I shoot the child who gets interviewed.

Thursday, October 21st Laura and I went to SUNY Farmingdale for the 4th annual volunteer fair. There were over 75 non-profit organizations there including Make A Wish. It was nice to see how many people were there interested in helping out the community. A volunteer fair doesn’t sound all that exciting, but it was a lot of fun learning about the various organizations that exist on Long Island. This story made me want to get involved with community service and it is something that I am looking into.

Today we went out to shoot two stories. One was a annoucement of a online waste management resource for North Hempstead, where residents can locate recycling centers for anything from bottles and cans to computers and shoe polish. Got some good shots and I will be able to get some really effective shots of the website. We also went to a Parkinson’s Symposium at NYIT’s NYCOM. Not alot went on but we got some good crowd shots and now I understand the benefits of hypergain. It was a fairly dark room and the electronic boost was very effective. I was also able to get some shots off the monitors in the auditorium which hopefully I’ll be able to use. Not sure if i’m going to be working on these stories though.

On this day I stayed in the studio to work on my story for the Studio opening. I just thought I was going to shoot the footage and then pass it onto a reporter but I was given the responsibility of editing and writing myself. The writing was enjoyable but the editing… lets just say i need work on that. I had to come in the next day to edit and i needed Gary’s help to get it right. Going to need to practice editing one of these days. The main reason i stayed in the studio today was because of a Roundtable we had to shoot. We were short handed so i had to run the three cameras on the floor as well as cueing Dana and calling for wrap up. For the most part it was easy, only one camera had to be adjusted and it just needed to be panned back and worth between the guests. The hardest part was that Dana’s back was to me and i had to quietly take off my headset and make my way across the floor to have her see me. Overall it was very good experience.